Because Mondays just aren’t bad enough, it seems Mother Nature is having a bit of a giggle after forcing the second work week in a row with nasty winter storms, snarling traffic at airports from Chicago to the East Coast and prompting more than 5,400 flight cancellations since Sunday. [More]

Anyone with a car who lived in areas impacted by super storm Sandy in 2012 will surely remember the freakishly long lines for gas at stations all over the Northeast. To keep those shortages from happening again should the region be hit with another severe storm or hurricane, the federal government is creating a stockpile of gasoline, to the tune of one million barrels (said in Dr. Evil voice because that joke still exists, inexplicably). [More]

Yes, winter happens ever year. But goshdarnit if people aren’t completely fed up with Old Man Winter’s blustery temper this season, which has already seen thousands of flights canceled. Including those canceled over the weekend in preparation for this latest bit of blizzarding, at least 4,500 flights have been ditched and thousands others delayed. [More]

Did you think that you were safe from lightning strikes while you’re indoors, paying for your groceries? Apparently not. A woman standing in line at a Louisiana supermarket was struck by lightning, a baffling event that a meteorologist called “one-in-a-million.” She ended up in the hospital, and business went on as usual in the store. [More]

While the East Coast might be done with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene now, many areas are still in the throes of storm season, which lasts from June until October. You’ve seen it on the news, but what would you do if you were stuck in a submerged car during flooding? [More]

There are some things that you really, really don’t want to handle doing yourself. After a tree took out electric and phone lines on his property, A. in Texas is left with the heavy trunk resting on high-tension steel cables that normally go between the poles. An AT&T told A. during a visit to just remove the tree trunk and let the cables go up. A city inspector and a professional lineman separately told A. that doing so might lead to the cables flying up and taking the utility lines out again, and could also injure or kill the person doing the work. [More]

Devastating storms have ripped across the country in the past few weeks, leaving at least 342 dead and entire blocks and houses demolished. As a home appliance retailer, what’s your first thought? That’s right, targeted upsell. Several of our readers have sent in this email they got from Sears which says “Affected by the storm? Sears can help you clean up,” and then displays the wet vacs, chainsaws and generators you can buy. The 10% off Sears water extraction service could come in handy, but the email struck some of our readers as being in poor taste. [More]

The massive snowstorm on the East Coast this weekend has led to canceled and delayed flights–and a lot of aggravation on the part of Delta Air Lines customers. Because the only thing better than waiting for hours on hold to learn your flight’s status or reschedule a flight canceled due to snow is listening to “Let it Snow.” On a loop. [More]

Since we first posted this, Verizon has changed its mind and announced that it will provide service credits to storm victims in Southern Illinois who were without service for most of the month. The credits won’t be automatic; to qualify for them, affected residents must call 800-837-4966 (1-800-VERIZON) to tell the company that they were without service.

When storms force your cruise to skip ports of call, don’t sit idly in your cabin watching the whitecaps break menacingly against the ship. Go find your fellow passengers and stage a mutiny! At least that is what passengers onboard the Sapphire Princess did when two typhoons kept the ship from planned port calls in Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan.

At one point, with passengers assembled in the ship’s theater, she said, “the attorney jumped up and grabbed the microphone away from the assistant cruise director and said: ‘We’re taking over the stage! We have a petition!'”

When a storm forced American Airlines to divert 130 planes from Dallas-Fort Worth last year, the airline tracked the diverted planes not with an advanced computer system, but with a legal pad.

Lacking any automated system for keeping track of all those diverted planes, Mr. Dillman and his colleagues furiously scribbled down details of where they had gone, how long they had sat there, and whether pilots had enough time left on their daily work limits to keep flying when the weather cleared.

Thinking of flying today? You may want to think again. United is offering travel waivers for those of you flying in or out of the following states: Colorado; Connecticut; Illinois; Indiana; Massachusetts; Maryland; Michigan; Missouri; New Jersey; New York; Ohio; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Wisconsin.

CBS2 Chicago is reporting that American and United, O’Hare’s biggest carriers, are urging people to rebook flights in and out of Chicago. “Because of the weather both American and United are allowing passengers to rebook their flights without penalty, and some have already taken advantage of that.